A British man who was killed fighting alongside Al Qaeda-linked extremists in Syria funded his trip by mugging people in an affluent area of London, The Mail on Sunday has learned.
Choukri Ellekhlifi, 22, threatened victims with a Taser-style high-voltage stun gun and forced them to hand over valuables including designer watches and mobile phones.
He lived in London until a year ago when he skipped bail and travelled to Syria to join a group of Islamic extremists waging war on President Assad’s regime.
Now it has been revealed that he was one of three British men killed as their group attacked pro-government forces near the city of Aleppo on August 11.
The trio were part of a group of ten British jihadists who joined up with 20 other Britons to fight with the Al-Nusra Front, which is allied to Al Qaeda.
Ellekhlifi had joined the rebels under a pseudonym but his true identity became clear after police compared mugshots taken after his arrest for the street robberies with a photo of British fighters in Syria that emerged last week.
Another man pictured with him, Mohammed el-Araj, 23, from Ladbroke Grove, West London, was killed two weeks later during a firefight.
Months before his death, Ellekhlifi targeted wealthy individuals in Belgravia, Central London to raise funds for his journey to the Middle East, according to security sources.
Alongside two accomplices – Mohamed Elyasse Taleouine, 21, and Mohammed Ibrahim, 23, both from West London – Ellekhlifi committed eight robberies during a four-day crime spree last year.
‘Wearing masks, they would approach their victims on bicycles, threaten them with a stun gun and demand they hand over their possessions,’ a security source said.
Two of the gang’s victims needed hospital treatment after the gun was fired at them.
The three men were arrested and released on bail and it is thought that Ellekhlifi then fled Britain to join the Syrian rebels.
MI5 estimates that up to 300 young Britons have travelled to fight in Syria. Fears are growing that they could pose a terrorist threat when they return home.

Assad is an evil dictator, but he really is doing the work that the British police can’t do.frontpagemag

Then, most critically, in April, when the back channel was reactivated in advance of the Geneva P5+1 meetings, the US released a fourth Iranian prisoner, high-ranking Iranian scientist Atarodi, who was arrested in California on charges that remain sealed but relate to his attempt to acquire what are known as dual-use technologies, or equipment that could be used for Iran’s military-nuclear programs. Iran has not reciprocated for that latest release.
The US began reciprocating in August 2012, Solomon said. It freed Shahrzad Mir Gholikhan, an Iranian convicted on three counts of weapons trafficking. Next Nosratollah Tajik, a former Iranian ambassador to Jordan — who, like Gholikhan, had been initially apprehended abroad trying to buy night-vision goggles from US agents — was freed after the US opted not to follow up an extradition request it had submitted to the British. Then, in January 2013, Amir Hossein Seirafi was released, also via Oman, having been arrested in Frankfurt and convicted in the US of trying to buy specialized vacuum pumps that could be used in the Iranian nuclear program.
Finally, in April, came the release of Mojtaba Atarodi.

The family of a former FBI agent who mysteriously disappeared almost seven years ago in Iran is preparing for a grim Thanksgiving with an empty seat at the table, as Robert Levinson has now become the longest-held American hostage in U.S. history.
Iranian officials have long denied any wrongdoing in Levinson’s disappearance, but the man’s family as well as the FBI believe he is alive and possibly imprisoned in southwest Asia.
The family issued a statement Monday, pleading with Levinson’s alleged captors to “show mercy” and allow him to reunite with his family.
“Our family will soon gather for our seventh Thanksgiving without Bob, and the pain will be almost impossible to bear,” Levinson’s wife, Christine, wrote on a website devoted to the search for him. “Yet, as we endure this terrible nightmare from which we cannot wake, we know that we must bear it for Bob, the most extraordinary man we have ever known.”
Iranian state-run television reported at the time that Levinson was in the hands of Iranian security forces — but no group has officially claimed responsibility for taking him. American-born David Belfield, who fled to Iran after killing an associate of the former shah in Maryland in 1980 and now goes by the name Dawud Salahuddin, reportedly met with Levinson during his visit and later claimed the former agent was being detained by the Iranians.

Al Qaeda-associated "Da'ash" organization has released a video in which a young German who converted to Islam 4 years ago urges German Muslims to join the jihad in Syria and establish an Islamic Caliphate system to rule the world.
The convert is one of thousands of foreign jihadists coming to Syria to join the rebels fighting President Bashar Assad's regime. Just recently a German convert to Islam and former player on the German national soccer team was killed after he joined the fighting in Syria.
In the Da'ash video German convert "Abu Osama," a name he picked because he "loves Osama bin Laden," speaks in German, exhorting Muslims worldwide to come to Syria and establish a caliphate to impose Islamic law on the entire globe.
The video can be seen here:
Abu Osama's words, which mirror the video message of an American convert jihadist who recently called for Islamic global domination, reveal some of the ideological indoctrination being pushed by Al Qaeda in the West.
He begins saying contemplation about the goal of life and the purpose of Creation led him to Islam, adding "I am a German Muslim, and you too can consider the goal of life and submit to Allah like I did."
Abu Osama then attacks secular politicians for making human laws rather than following religious law, saying "we kill the heads of the heretics and their followers to spread world justice and to implement the law of Allah."
His message then gets personal as he says "I am not speaking to the infidels, my words are directed at the Muslims. Are you happy with your life in Germany? Do you go to night clubs and have girlfriends? Get married...and you won't need prostitution. Get married, Allah allowed marrying 4 wives."
Osama then calls for global jihad, saying "my brothers and sisters, come to...fight in jihad, since jihad is an active commandment on every Muslim. ...Donate money (to jihad)."
The German convert closes saying "we love death and we will win here."
While a Geneva peace conference has been called for January 22, prospects are in question as many of the opposition forces refuse to join the talks and Assad refuses to step down as part of a transition in government.
The Syrian war, now into its third year, has left over 120,000 dead, including 11,000 children. It has also created 2.2 million Syrian refugees, half of which are children whose future prospects are dim due to low school attendance and child labor.israelnationalnews

Pic: zmemusicBy Norman MarkowitzI recently forwarded a petition calling for action by the Federation of International Football Associations(FIFA) the world’s leading Soccer organization, calling for the suspension of the Croatian National Soccer team from the upcoming World Cup games in Brazilbecause of its use of WWII Croatian slogansandimploredour readers to support the petition

There is another story concerning Croatia’s role in WWII which has gotten significant coverage in France, one in which representatives of the Croatian Community in France, or “Croats Residing in France” as they call themselves, have sued Bob Dylan, whose songs of social criticism, beginning with “Masters of War” “Blowin in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A Changin” have made him one of the best known and admired American artist of the last fifty years.

Below, I have presented the Croatian press commentary of this “case,” and below thatmy own comments.It makes an interestingsubtext to the incitement by the Croatian National football team.In both cases, that of the defenders of the football team and the Dylan’sattackers, there is an obvious desire to deny either celebrate or deny a barbarous past, to make sure that “the times they are not cnangin.”

Croats in France to File Suit Against Bob Dylan

Croat association in France has announced it will file a lawsuit against Bob Dylan for making offensive comments about Croats in Rolling Stone magazine.

Vecernji List, BIRN

Zagreb

The Council of Croats in France, CRICCF, has decided to file a lawsuit against the US singer and songwriter for making what they call "deeply offensive" comments against Croats.

"CRICCF decided on its extraordinary session held this week to file criminal charges against Robert Allen Zimmerman aka Bob Dylan and the French publisher of Rolling Stone magazine for inciting racism and hatred against Croats and the Croatian people," Vlatko Maric, Secretary General of the Council, told the Croatian daily Vecernji List.

Commenting on still tense relations between African Americans and Whites, Dylan said:

"If you’ve got a slave master or the [Klu Klux] Klan in your blood, blacks can sense that ... Just like Jews can sense Nazi blood and the Serbs can sense Croatian blood".

Maric added that Dylan was "without any doubt inciting hatred against Croatians".

The comment about Croats has caused numerous comments on websites that published the interview, prompting some to accuse the musician of not knowing much about history and politics in the Balkans.

Some radio stations in Croatia, including Radio Split, banned his songs from its play list.

Dylan held two concerts in Belgrade, one in 1991 and the other one in 2010. Two years ago, Dylan also had a concert in Zagreb.

While the use of “blood” is very inappropriate, since all human blood is the same, that of Blacks and Whites, Jews and Gentiles, and the two South Slavic nationalities, Croatians and Serbians,and Dyland would have been much better offsaying Ustasha or Croatian Fascist, the press commentary is nevertheless telling.

First, the reference to “Robert Allen Zimmerman aka Bob Dylan is reminiscent of both NAZI andKlan and HUAC propaganda techniques when dealing withpublic figures of Jewish background who had changed their names.The Nazis for example referred to the prominent Jewish German writer Emil Ludwig as Emil Ludwig “Cohen” and segregationists and racists in the U.S. would traditionally refer to Jewish figures in the arts as Melvin Hesselberg aka Melvin Douglas, Julius Garfinkle aka John Garfield, and David Kaminski alias Danny Kaye, as if simple citing a Jewish name was enough to discredit the individual.

The crimes committed by German Fascists and the Fascist allies, of which the Croatian Ustasha wasone of the mostinfamous,became the basis forthe anti-racist law that the Croats are seeking to invoke.Actually, similar suits have been launched in a number of countries by various “rehabilitated” organizations—Veterans of Waffen SS groups in Baltic countries, against critics, including Holocaust survivors.

In Germany for example Nazi symbols and various Hitlerite tractsand films like “Jud Suss” and the “Eternal Jew” remain banned.In the U.S. even contemporary right wing “tea party”

Republicans do not celebrate the Klan, as they once were celebrated in D.W. Griffith’s silent film, Birth of a Naton.There are of course Holocaust Deniers here and through the world.Franjo Tudjman,who with the help of the U.S.-NAT0 bloc was the principle political leader and first head of state of today’s Croatia, was also one of the two heads of state in the world who joined the Holocaust deniers(the former president of Iran, ahmedinijad was the other, and his statements were far more widely publicized and condemned.

The bans on Dylan’s music in Croatia are also verymuch in the tradition of the House Un-American Activities Committee, who highlighted Jews, Blacks, and the foreign born in their attacks on cultural figures.Fortunately, there power was largely dissipated when Dylan began his career, although their actions played a role in the Blacklisting of Pete Seeger, the Weavers, and other artists who inspired his early work.

Bob Dylan doesn’t have much to worry about from this suit.Or from the establishment of any “Un-Croatian Activities Committee” which would go after him, or former Partisans and other anti-fascists while celebrating the present Croatian National Football team.It would be nice though ifthose who have brought this suit against Dylan would repudiate the mass murder carried out against Serbians, Jews, Roma(Gypsies) and anti-fascist resistance fighters at the Jasenovac Death camp run by the Ustasha as a human slaughterhouse during WWII and at other venues in Croatia and Bosnia.Then perhaps Dylan might clarify his statement, separating Croatians as people from the wartime fascist Ustasha regime , and with Croatians living in France and other countries call upon the present Croatian government to face up to this history

On Friday Alireza Bikdeli, Iranian ambassador to Turkey, announced that the two nations would launch "improved cooperation" between their intelligence services following the Iranian nuclear deal.
The two countries have been at odds over the conflict in Syria, as predominantly Sunni Turkey has sharply criticized President Bashar Assad's regime while Shi'ite majority Iran has backed the regime. However, Bikdeli said there were "no grounds" for allegations that Iran is spying on Turkey, reports Al Arabiya.
Turkish cooperation with Iran has in the past led it to increased tension with the US and Israel.
In October, reports revealed that Turkey had disclosed the identities of 10 Iranians working with the Mossad, leading the US to cancel the delivery of 10 Predator drones to Turkey.
Along with the public announcement of greater intelligence cooperation between Turkey and Iran, closer economic ties between the two nations are also already in the works.
On Thursday, Turkey's Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan announced that "in case the sanctions on Iran are eased, (Turkish bank) Halkbank and other Turkish banks will announce their readiness to process Iran's foreign banking transactions," reports Iranian Press TV
Bikdeli further announced that an Iranian delegation will visit Turkey in the near future to discuss increasing trade between the two countries, as reported by the Turkish Hurriyet Daily News.
"There are many areas between Turkey and Iran in which we can conduct trade. We have to revive those (areas)," added Bikdeli.
Last week Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was in Tehran, and Prime Minister Recep Erdogan plans to visit Iran next year following a trip by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to Turkey in January.israelnationalnews

Australia's conservative Government intends to dump laws that ban hate speech on the grounds that they inhibit free speech.
Amendments to the federal Racial Discrimination Act will be the first legislation put before Parliament by Attorney-General George Brandis who, with Prime Minister Tony Abbott, was angered by the conviction of right-wing columnist Andrew Bolt.
Bolt was found guilty before the September election of breaching the act by writing articles that Federal Court Justice Mordecai Bromberg said were not written in good faith and contained factual errors.
Headlined "White fellas in the black" and "It's so hip to be black", the articles suggested light-skinned people claimed Aboriginal descent to further their own interests.
Abbott said after the verdict that the "sacred principle of free speech" should not be restricted and that free speech meant the right to say what others might not like, not just the right to say something of which others approved.

The Coalition went to the election with the promise to change the act to ensure that speech found to be offensive or insulting was no longer defined as racial vilification.

At present the act outlaws actions in public that, based on race, colour, national or ethnic origin are likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate a person or group of persons.
This includes posting offensive material on the internet, publishing racially offensive comments in the print media, making offensive speeches at a public rally, racially abusing people in public places, or making racially abusive comments at sporting events.
The act makes exceptions for comments made "reasonably and in good faith", including artistic works or performances, academic or scientific debate, fair and accurate reporting on matters of public interest, and fair comment.
In the year to last June almost a quarter of the more than 2000 complaints lodged with the Human Rights Commission were made under the act, 192 of them citing racial hatred - up almost 60 per cent on the previous year.
The commission's annual report said more than 40 per cent of racial hatred complaints related to material on the internet, a "significant increase" on the previous year.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry's latest annual report on anti-Semitism showed similar trends, with the internet accounting for many of what was the second-highest level of incidents on record.
The number of reports of violence against Jews or Jewish facilities rose 21 per cent to 657. They cited vandalism or attacks on synagogues or other facilities, but the report said most involved threats and abuse.
Abusive and threatening emails, printed material, letters and phone calls increased 60 per cent over the previous year.
But Brandis, who believes the human rights pendulum has swung too far to the left and has been too narrowly defined, says he wants to "rebalance" the debate, and has drawn up terms of reference for a broad review by the Australian Law Reform Commission of statutory infringements of traditional rights and freedoms.
"The classic liberal democratic rights that in my view are the fundamental human rights have been almost pushed to the edge of the debate," he told the Australian.
"It is a very important part of my agenda to recentre that debate so that when people talk about rights, they talk about the great liberal democratic rights of freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of worship and freedom of the press ...
"You cannot have a situation in a liberal democracy in which the expression of an opinion is rendered unlawful because somebody else finds it offensive or insulting."
His planned amendments have been rejected by Labor, Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane, and indigenous and ethnic organisations.
A statement from groups ranging from the National Congress of First Peoples to representatives of Arab, Jewish, Greeks, Armenian and Muslim communities said they opposed absolutely plans to remove or dilute protections against racial vilification.nzheraldHat tip sheikyermami.com

By Thomas LifsonIt was startling enough to hear a comparison of the Geneva accord with Iran to the Munich accord with Hitler, widely blamed for paving the way for WW II. But there is a good argument to be made that Geneva was actually worse. Mark Steyn in NRO:

In Geneva, the participants came to the talks with different goals: The Americans and Europeans wanted an agreement; the Iranians wanted nukes. Each party got what it came for. Before the deal, the mullahs' existing facilities were said to be within four to seven weeks of nuclear "breakout"; under the new constraints, they'll be eight to nine weeks from breakout. (snip)Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal argued that Geneva is actually worse than Munich. In 1938, facing a German seizure of the Sudetenland, the French and British prime ministers were negotiating with Berlin from a position of profound military weakness: It's easy to despise Chamberlain with the benefit of hindsight, less easy to give an honest answer as to what one would have done differently playing a weak hand across the table from Hitler 75 years ago. This time round, a superpower and its allies accounting for over 50 percent of the planet's military spending was facing a militarily insignificant country with a ruined economy and no more than two to three months' worth of hard currency - and they gave it everything it wanted. I would add two further points. First, the Munich Agreement's language is brutal and unsparing, all "shall"s and "will"s: Paragraph 1) "The evacuation will begin on 1 October"; Paragraph 4) "The four territories marked on the attached map will be occupied by German troops in the following order." By contrast, the P5+1 (U.S., U.K., France, Russia, China, plus Germany) "Joint Plan of Action" barely reads like an international agreement at all. It's all conditional, a forest of "would"s: "There would be additional steps in between the initial measures and the final step . . . " In the postmodern phase of Western resolve, it's an agreement to reach an agreement - supposedly within six months. But one gets the strong impression that, when that six-month deadline comes and goes, the temporary agreement will trundle along semi-permanently to the satisfaction of all parties.Secondly, there are subtler concessions. Explaining that their "singular object" was to "ensure that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon," John Kerry said that "Foreign Minister Zarif emphasized that they don't intend to do this, and the Supreme Leader has indicated there is a fatwa which forbids them to do this." "The Supreme Leader" is not Barack Obama but Ayatollah Khamenei. Why is America's secretary of state dignifying Khamenei as "the Supreme Leader"? In his own famous remarks upon his return from Munich, Neville Chamberlain referred only to "Herr Hitler." "Der Führer" means, in effect, "the Supreme Leader," but, unlike Kerry (and Obama), Chamberlain understood that it would be unseemly for the representative of a free people to confer respectability on such a designation. As for the Führer denos jours, Ayatollah Khamenei called Israel a "rabid dog" and dismissed "the leaders of the Zionist regime, who look like beasts and cannot be called human." If "the Supreme Leader"'s words are to be taken at face value when it comes to these supposed constraints preventing Iran from going nuclear, why not also when he calls Jews sub-human?

George Santayana's famous dictum, "Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it," is chillingly apt now. Hitler's madness was far less evident in 1938 than the Ayatollah's madness today.americanthinker

A historic public vote on Britain’s membership of the EU moved a step closer yesterday after MPs backed a Bill calling for a referendum in 2017.The legislation passed its final hurdle in the House of Commons despite cynical efforts by Labour and the Lib Dems to delay its passage.
The Bill will now move to the House of Lords for scrutiny early next year.
James Wharton, the Tory MP behind it, said it was a “significant” milestone in the campaign to let the British public have their say. It comes as a major boost for the Daily Express, which is crusading for Britain to leave the EU.
The Private Member’s Bill has been strongly supported by David Cameron.
At an EU summit in Lithuania last night, he hit back at “totally inappropriate” criticism by a commissioner of his plans for tougher curbs on migrants.
But both his deputy Nick Clegg and Labour leader Ed Miliband have warned of the damage to business they say would be caused by holding a referendum.
Although the Bill was “drawn-out”, Mr Wharton said it had made progress that many said would not happen.
He said: “This is significant and I think it could be argued to be a historic thing. The House of Commons has voted overwhelmingly to pass at every stage legislation for a referendum. That has not been done since the last referendum in 1975.”
Opposition MPs hoped the legislation would run out of time, speaking at length to try to frustrate its progress.
Labour’s Mike Gapes, who spoke for 38 minutes at one stage, said the Bill was a “pig-in-a-poke”, depending on a pledge to renegotiate UK membership which may never happen. He hoped the House of Lords would amend it “significantly”.
But Mr Wharton warned: “For an unelected House to deny the British people a say on a Bill which has been passed by the elected House of Commons would put them in a very difficult position.”
In a new ComRes poll for campaign group Get Britain Out, nearly a quarter of voters would be less likely to back Labour at the next general election if the party thwarts the Bill’s progress.
express

On this day, exactly seventy years ago, a group of revolutionaries meeting in the Bosnian town of Jajce proclaimed themselves the only legitimate government of Yugoslavia.

By itself, their declaration meant little. Yugoslavia hardly existed in practice, partitioned between the German Reich and its Hungarian, Bulgarian and Croat allies. The royal government, which in April 1941 left the country to continue the fight from exile (as did the governments of Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, and Greece, among others) had appointed General Mihailovich, a staff officer leading the guerrilla movement, their Minister of War and commanding officer of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland. In addition to fighting the Germans, Croats, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Albanians and even some collaborators among the Serbs, Mihailovich's guerrilla also fought the Communist partisans, who emerged following the Nazi invasion of the USSR and made their priority to claim Yugoslavia for the socialist workers' revolution.

By late 1943, after Stalingrad and Kursk, it was clear that Germany would lose the war. That the Soviet tanks would show up was a question not of whether, but of when. Meanwhile, the Western Allies landed in Italy, forcing its surrender in September 1943.

That had multiple consequences for the war in Yugoslavia. Until then, the Italians were able to suppress the genocidal rampages of Croats and Albanians. Afterwards, they had a free hand and full German support, in exchange for Waffen-SS divisions made up of Albanians and Bosnian Muslims (Skenderbeg, Handschar, Kama).

The Communists did nothing to stop the atrocities. In line with their dogma, the Serbs were "oppressors", while the Croats and Albanians were the "oppressed" - so even though the Albanian leadership and the Ustasha were "reactionaries" and "fascists" in the Communist book, the mass murder and expulsion of Serbs were not objectionable as such.

To be fair, Communists weren't the only ones at the meeting in Jajce. Some of the "delegates" were pre-war politicians from opposition ranks: Croat separatists, Bosnian Muslims, and others generally sympathetic to the Communist platform of resurrecting Yugoslavia, but as a federation. If the Communists were the radicals, these "democrats" were their useful idiots.

Meanwhile, the Serbs in Communist ranks have by then so internalized the dogma of their own collective guilt for alleged "bourgeois imperialism", become so fanatical in their faith - and make no mistake, Marxism was a religion, though its deity was of this world - that they not only agreed to stand by while their families were being slaughtered, but to shift blame for the atrocities onto the designated "fascists," while the collectives that participated were actually rewarded. Thus arose the post-war Socialist Republic of Croatia, laying claim to Istria, all the Adriatic coast, Dubrovnik and western Syrmia, for example. Thus came about the "Autonomous province of Kosovo".

Why did the Communists believe that November 1943 was the right time to declare themselves the new rulers of a country they had yet to resurrect from under the Nazi heel? The Red Army was coming, but it would take them another nine months. Could the answer lie in the West?

In 1915, the Serbian Army and government retreated before the German, Austrian and Bulgarian invasion; the survivors reached Entente territory in Greece, and were deployed at the Salonica Front. In September 1918, the Serbs spearheaded the Entente attack and rolled up the front; six weeks later, they had not only liberated their homeland, but were approaching Vienna. The royal Yugoslav government hoped for a repeat performance, with an Allied landing along the Adriatic coast helping Mihailovic launch a general uprising. But the plans for an Adriatic Landing never went beyond the theoretical.

A day before the meeting in Jajce, Stalin met with Churchill in Tehran, and demanded the British switch their support from Mihailovich to Tito's Communists. Churchill wasted no time in agreeing. Supposedly, this is because Tito's men were "killing more Germans" - which was simply not true. But the fact that Stalin's demand and the meeting in Jajce were almost simultaneous suggests it was coordinated on the Communist part.

As for Britain's betrayal, it is a fact of history - only the motivations remain beyond conclusive explanation just yet. There are several theories to explain it, from secret Communist sympathizers in British intelligence (who did exist), to a story that young Churchill was roughed up by some Serbian officers for libeling the Serbs while he covered the Balkan Wars as a journalist. But the best explanation is probably the simplest: to London, the Serbs have ever been but an extension of the hated Russians, so Whitehall preferred a Croat-led Yugoslavia that would keep the Serbs under control. Interestingly enough, Hitler thought the same.

Another clue can be found in the decision of Jajce revolutionaries (calling themselves the "Anti-Fascist Council of People's Liberation of Yugoslavia, or AVNOJ) to ban the royal government from returning to the country. In sections 3 and 4, the AVNOJ leadership is tasked to "review all the international treaties and obligations" the royal government entered into, "for the purpose of nullification or approval", and declared all subsequent treaties made by the royals null and void.

This enabled both London and Washington to effectively confiscate the gold reserves the royals managed to take with them, as "payment" for all the military aid provided to both Mihailovich and the Communists. The remaining gold, hidden in Montenegrin caves, was discovered in 1943 by an enterprising Italian officer - who sent a small portion to Mussolini, gave the half of the remainder to Tito in 1944, and kept the rest for himself. Meanwhile, the Communists kept telling the people the "corrupt plutocrats" of the royal government stole all their gold. And while King Peter II died broke, Tito lived and died like a pharaoh.

In addition to throwing Stalin a bone - on account of the Red Army doing the bulk of the fighting in Europe - the Western Allies had a few more reasons to back Tito. For one, that avoided the sticky matter of the wartime Croatia. Horrific crimes of the Croatian state, backed by the Roman Catholic Church, had disgusted the Italians and unsettled even the Germans. How could anyone ask of the Serbs to re-create Yugoslavia with the Croats, after that? Easy enough: by having Tito denounce the Pavelic regime as "a handful of fascists," then rehabilitate Croatia as a federal republic in the new Yugoslavia. And while the Serbs had to continue apologizing for their existence - "oppressors," remember? - a top Croat official (Stevo Krajacic) was able to tell the families of Serbs murdered in the Jasenovac camp complex,"we killed too few of you here." (1968)

The suppression of Croat atrocities not only made Tito's Yugoslavia possible, it was also extremely useful for keeping the Church of Rome useful during the Cold War, as a tool of anti-Communism in places like Poland.

And so, on that November night in Jajce, a plan approved in Tehran was set in motion. Hitler had already unwittingly provided a template. Eighteen months later, when Soviet tanks drove the Germans out, Tito became the pharaoh of a reanimated Yugoslavia. Though the principal victims of Nazi invaders, and principal fighters against them, Serbs loyal to the king were persecuted, and even those who backed Tito found themselves third-rate subjects in their own country. Adding insult to injury, they were told this nightmare was the ultimate fulfillment of their historical dream of freedom.

By James Lewis"Why can't Iran be allowed to have its own nukes?" asked a good friend of mine. "It only seems fair." My friend is an intelligent person who has seen politics up close. And yet, such is the power of mass indoctrination, she doesn't know that Iran isn't a normal nation.Four decades after Jimmy Carter's Iranian Hostage Crisis, which crashed his presidency and brought Ronald Reagan into office, our media have failed completely and utterly to tell the plain truth about the genocidal regime in Tehran.When we complain about the blindness of our friends and family, we really need to point at the source: the leftist monopoly over our Organs of Propaganda. There is no genuine debate in American media. Nothing honest or worth learning. As in Europe, our Big Corporate Media peddle 24/7 leftist agit-prop. If you want to see Crony Socialism at work, simply look at NBC and its Fat Cat owners, GE/Comcast. You can be sure they benefit financially from their alliance with the Left.This tendency reaches its nadir when the media sell our people on a purposely genocidal foreign policy. They don't use those words, of course. But that's the unmistakable goal.The most obvious case of genocidal agitation and propaganda today is the decades-long campaign against the existence of Israel, which declared independence in 1948.India won its independence in 1947.So did Pakistan.Jordan became an independent nation in 1946.There is no international Leftist campaign to destroy the independence of any country but Israel. Obama seeks to undermine Israel at every opportunity, just like the socialist ruling class of the EU.In the Muslim world an open hate propaganda campaign goes on every single day, funded by the Saudis. (See MEMRI.org for daily updates of the huge hate campaign translated into English from Arabic and other languages).The left will deny its genocidal goals, but as William F. Buckley used to say, "Who says A must say B."You can't slander a small democratic nation that is under siege by murderous enemies, day after day, year after year, without revealing your real goal: the abolition of Israel as a defensible state.That means genocide, which is precisely what the Nazis did in cahoots with Muslims like the Mufti of Jerusalem.This is not an exaggeration.It is the literal truth.And if as an American you don't believe that, just consider the fact that the United States is also slandered in exactly the same way by the same cast of characters. But America is a good and decent nation, constantly trying to be liked and loved by a world that is cruel, bloody, corrupt, and deceptive. We are the victims of a massive guilt trip by Europe, which is trying to excuse its own bloody past. Half of America has fallen into the trap of apologizing for ourselves -- which is sheer, unadulterated nonsense. Europe has an endless history of ethnic, national, and religious hatreds, and today it is falling back into its self-destructive past. The Third World has its own long, long history of ethnic scapegoating. The Japanese still despise the Koreans and will not let them immigrate. The Chinese have just made two huge territorial grabs against the Philippines and Japan. Africa is full of racial strife and genocide. The Sudan has been in a genocidal war against native African tribes for two decades. Pakistan constantly commits terrorist acts against India.But decades of propaganda have convinced Americans that we are the bad hats and the Third World has all the innocent victims of history. That is the opposite of the truth.Your friends' heads have been twisted by mass propaganda.The international Left has systematically pursued a barely disguised genocidal campaign against a small, sovereign country that is under daily siege from a truly primitive set of enemies, including the Muslim Brotherhood (Hamas) and the mullahs of Tehran (Hizb'allah). Obama is now shamefully supporting 60,000 Al Qaida gangsters in Syria. The Benghazi fiasco had a U.S. ambassador secretly smuggling Libyan arms to those nice folks, in collusion with radical Islamist gangs in Libya, who turned around and slaughtered him.This is not only crazy, it is an active alliance with the most evil, child-killing, woman-beating, inhumane ideology in human history. The U.S. is now utterly immoral in its new "alliances" -- which will not outlast this administration.And now Obama and the Europeans have openly flipped to the side of the warrior priests of Qum. The new face of the mullahs today is Hasan Rouhani, who led the El Quds truck bombing that killed 299 U.S. Marines and French peacekeepers in Beirut in 1983. He is a killer priest. They are no better than Saddam Hussein. They have a bloody reign of terror over there, and now Obama has taken their side against a good and decent democratic nation, the only stable and progressive nation in the Middle East.Today even the Saudis are frightened by Obama. Al-Waleed Bin Talal, the biggest billionaire in Saudi Arabia, just flipped and said in public "For the first time, Saudi Arabian interests and Israel are almost in parallel." Obama's meddling in the Middle East is having the opposite of its intended effects. Rather than weakening Israel, Obama is forcing the Saudis to make common cause with Israel.Just think about that for a minute.Obama is an ideological Leninist (the same thing as a Third World Socialist), as written in Dreams from My Father. It's not a secret. It's right out in the open.But Americans are so ignorant of the theological subtleties of the Left that only academic Marxists understand that. Jeremiah Wright understands it, because he preached hatred for white America and Jewish Israel for twenty years, while the Obamas attended that "church."So today we see millions and millions of indoctrinated liberals who keep wondering, "Why shouldn't Iran have its own nukes? It's only fair!"The obvious answer is that the mullahcracy is a murderous, criminal enterprise. Sane people don't give guns to criminals. Sane nations don't want criminal cults to have nuclear weapons.The United States is no longer a rational nation. Under Obama we are burning our traditional allies, and since weakness brings aggression, Iran is now empowered, China is grabbing ocean territory for shale deposits, and the worst offenders against women's rights are now elected to the UN Human Rights Commission.Obama can't see anything wrong with that.Check the facts if you doubt it.There is a murderous evil let loose in the world, and the United States is actively aiding and supporting it.We have never done this before.Obama's presidency is historic -- not because he happens to be a black guy -- but because he and his buds have flipped American policy from good to evil.americanthinker

Friday, November 29, 2013

The New York City Council is considering a ban on the use of electronic cigarettes in bars, restaurant, and other “public places”—not because there is any evidence that the devices pose a hazard but because they look too much like regular cigarettes. Councilman James Gennaro, a sponsor of the proposed ban, tells The New York Times, “We see these cigarettes are really starting to proliferate, and it’s unacceptable.” Why is it unacceptable? According to the Times, “Mr. Gennaro said children who could not differentiate between regular and electronic smoking were getting the message that smoking is socially acceptable.”

Jacob seems oddly unimpressed with the idea that things that look like other things should be banned lest ‘the children’ be confused.
He concludes:

Although the Times says vaping in public remains legal thanks to “a loophole” in New York’s smoking ban, the truth is that vaping remains legal precisely because vaping is not smoking. By seeking to equate the two, control freaks like Gennaro may achieve the opposite of their avowed aim, increasing rather than reducing smoking-related illness. As Craig Weiss, president of the e-cigarette company NJoy, tells the Times, “If you make it just as inconvenient to use an electronic cigarette as a tobacco cigarette, people are just going to keep smoking their Marlboros.”

The health and education editor of the student newspaper at one of Canada’s most prestigious universities has advised the world that Movember — the month-long pledge by men to grow hair above the upper lip to support men’s health awareness — is “sexist, racist, transphobic, and misinformed.”

Let’s begin with transphobic. Which means it discriminates against women who have themselves mutilated so they can pretend to be men.

Haddad’s complaints about Movember are many. To begin with, he says, the concept discriminates against transgender people by linking masculinity “to secondary male characteristics, including having a prostate” and the ability to grow facial hair.
“To be completely clear, you don’t have to be a man to have a prostate, and you don’t have to have a prostate to be a man,” Haddad proclaims.

While women can’t grow a prostate (or be man), they can grow facial hair. And with the kinds of hormones being injected into the bodies of women who claim to be transgender men, they certainly do grow facial hair.
So Haddad is not only crazy. He’s also wrong.

The English and cultural studies major argues that Movember “implies an archaic view of gender that implies that only a male/female gender binary exists, and that you aren’t really a man if you don’t necessarily identify with that binary.”

Close encounters of the third kind? Is there a third non-binary sex we’re missing? Like Mowen? And can’t you be a third gender and still grow facial hair?

He asks: “How are people who do not identify with that binary and have a prostate supposed to partake in this cause?”

I don’t even…

Haddad claims Movember is also racist because black males are “twice as likely to develop” prostate cancer than white males yet most people celebrating Movember are white.

So mustaches are racist because black men are more likely to get prostate cancer.

Finally, Haddad aggressively claims that “campaigns like Movember help perpetuate” micro-aggressions–which he defines as “interactions between people of different races, genders, sexualities, and cultures that represent small acts of non-physical violence.”

I think this entire essay counts as a micro-aggression.

“Do some basic research, educate yourself on the issue, and think twice before growing a moustache this, or any other, November,” Haddad implores.

A Slovak politician, known for wearing a Nazi-style uniform and calling Roma “parasites,” was elected to head one of eight regional governments in the eastern European country.
Marian Kotleba won 56 percent of the vote in the Banska Bytrica region, beating incumbent Vladimir Manka, a member of Prime Minister Robert Fico’s Smer party, according to results posted on the website of the Slovak Statistical Office. Smer party candidates won in six districts, while the opposition SDKU retained the post in Bratislava. Kotleba, 36, has praised Jozef Tiso, president of the Slovak fascist satellite state during World War II, a regime that sent tens of thousands of Jews to Nazi concentration camps. Originally a high school computer-science teacher, Kotleba has been repeatedly detained by police for supporting fascism and stirring racial hatred. Charges were later dropped. The economic slowdown in the second-poorest member of the euro area has helped fuel sentiment against its Roma population, which comprises about 7 percent of the country. Growth is projected to be 0.8 percent this year, rising to 2.2 percent in 2014, and the government may need to adopt further austerity measures to meet European Union deficit targets, the country’s Fiscal Responsibility Council said this month.

Thank goodness that the adoption of the single currency is stopping Europe from slipping back into its bad old ways!nationalreview

A French court imposed a $1,300 fine on members of an anti-Israel group who called on supermarket shoppers to boycott Israeli products.
The Court of Appeals of Colmar near Strasbourg fined each of the group’s 12 members individually on Wednesday for their participation in a pro-boycott activity in 2009-2010, which the court qualified as “provocation to discrimination.” The court also gave the activists a suspended jail sentence, according to a report by the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities.
The ruling reversed a 2012 verdict by the Correctional Tribunal of Mulhouse, which found the defendants not guilty. Prosecutors filed the appeal, CRIF said in a statement.
The actions for which the defendants were sentenced took place in 2009 in a supermarket in Mulhouse and again in 2010. Some of the defendants received a double fine for each action, CRIF reported.
The perpetrators were sentenced in accordance with strict anti-discrimination laws, including one passed by the French parliament in 2003 known as the Lellouche Law, after the lawmaker who drafted it, Pierre Lellouche.
In September, seven activists were given a $650 fine for a similar action in 2010 in a supermarket in Alençon.
Yet the Court of Cassation — France’s highest criminal court of appeal — on Nov. 19 acquitted several anti-Israel protesters who staged a boycott action in a supermarket in Evry near Paris in 2009.
In a separate ruling, a French court of appeals on Thursday slapped a $36,000 fine on the comedian Dieudonne for “inciting racial hate” in films in which he ridiculed the Holocaust and expressed anti-Semitic views. It was Dieudonne’s seventh conviction related to anti-Semitism.
Some of the films contain the word “shoananas,” a combination of the Hebrew name for the Holocaust with the French word for pineapple. It is used as a code word for denying the Holocaust yet seen to be too vague to violate France’s law forbidding Holocaust denial.
jta

There was a lot to choose from, but Dan Hannan has now identified what he believes to be the single worst thing about the EU:

[T]he EU makes up the rules as it goes along.

Just think, for a moment, about what that means. It means that any deal you’ve signed can be arbitrarily altered later. It means that any plans you’ve made, on the basis of what you took to be binding agreements, can be retrospectively destroyed. It means, in short, that there is no effective rule of law…. The EU has always been ready to subordinate the dots and commas of the rules to political imperatives….
To cite only the most recent example, the euro-zone bailouts were patently illegal. Article 125 of the EU Treaty is unequivocal: “The Union shall not be liable for, or assume the commitments of, central governments, regional, local or other public authorities, other bodies governed by public law, or public undertakings of any Member State.” This clause was no mere technicality. It was on the basis of its promise that the Germans agreed to abandon the Deutschmark in the first place. As Angela Merkel put it: “We have a Treaty under which there is no possibility of paying to bail out states.”
Yet, as soon as it became clear that the euro wouldn’t survive without cash transfusions, the dots and commas of the treaties were set aside. Christine Lagarde, then the French finance minister and now the director of the International Monetary Fund, boasted about what had happened: “We violated all the rules because we wanted to close ranks and really rescue the euro zone. The Treaty of Lisbon was very straightforward. No bailouts.”
How can [Britain] deal with a body that is not just open about, but proud of, its readiness to bend the rules?

How indeed?
Hannan concludes:

Anglosphere exceptionalism is summed up in the words John Adams used when designing the Massachusetts state constitution: “a government of laws not of men”. Actually, the phrase wasn’t Adams’s: he was quoting a seventeenth-century English radical called James Harrington – a reminder of the deep roots of our shared Anglosphere liberties. But the point holds: the Anglosphere miracle lies in the elevation of the law above the state rather than the other way around. How sad that, debilitated by 40 years of EU membership, [Britain appears] to have dropped that principle.

Thank goodness that sort of thing couldn’t happen over here!nationalreview

The UK is experiencing an interesting reversal of the Opium War. Now Africa is forcing the UK to buy drugs. Some have blamed Khat for destroying entire societies. But on the plus side, it supposedly doesn’t make its users violent so maybe a plus for social harmony.Multiculturalism now comes with drug use tolerance included.

Britain’s plan to ban khat, a leafy plant chewed as a stimulant in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian peninsula, should be dropped because it could alienate immigrants and damage counter-terrorism operations, lawmakers said on Friday.

How could banning a drug damage counterterrorism?

Banning the use of khat, or qat, would create tension between the police and immigrants, particularly Somalis who have settled across Britain, the committee said in a report.
“It is baffling that potential friction, between already disadvantaged communities and the police, has not been fully considered,” said committee chairman Keith Vaz. “We cannot afford for those who are already marginalized to be pushed towards criminality or extremism.”

Vaz was the guy who got out front to call for a Satanic Verses ban back in the day. While he’s all for banning books that offend Muslims, he warns ever so subtly that banning a popular African drug will lead to Islamic terrorism.

It would also be seen as a betrayal by Kenya, where growing khat is a big source of income in some areas, the panel added. Any damage to bilateral relations could undermine the two countries’ joint fight against militants.

Why not legalize heroin? Afghanistan will see it as a betrayal if the UK doesn’t and it will push the Taliban toward extremism.

Home Secretary (interior minister) Theresa May said in July that the ban would help prevent Britain from becoming a hub for the illegal trade in khat to countries where it is banned. She also cited evidence that khat has been linked to “low attainment and family breakdowns”.

Otherwise known as multiculturalism.
In Somalia, 80 percent of the men are on Khat. (Why yes we do need more immigration from Somalia. And as a bonus, 4 out of 5 Somali immigrants will be junkies.)

The US Drug Enforcement Agency website (www.usdoj.gov/dea) report that khat seizures increased from 17.6 metric tons in 1996 to 37.2 metric tons in 2001 indicating substantial amounts of khat are consumed in the US.
Khat is illegal in the United States of America, cathinone is a Schedule I drug (the same as heroin and cocaine), and cathine is a Schedule IV drug.
Khat is considerably more expensive in North America than in those countries where it remains a legal drug: in the US street value is $400

Opposition by Germany and Britain have forced the Palestinian Authority (PA) to cancel their application to become a "member state" of the International Olive Council.
In April, as part of the peace talks with Israel, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas promised not to take unilateral action in joining international bodies.
Just recently Nabil Shaath, a senior official in the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), threatened that his organization was ready to join international organizations as the talks have failed to deliver results in the course of 5 months. On Friday Shaath emphasized that the PA is only remaining in the talks to free all 104 terrorists whose release was promised as a "gesture."
European diplomatic sources told Haaretz that German and British representatives blocked the application, noting that if the PA were to join the international organization it could threaten the peace talks. US Secretary of State John Kerry is set to return to Israel next week to keep pushing peace talks.
The PA application was supposed to be voted on at a meeting in Madrid this week.
German and British opposition was able to rule out the application, as European Union (EU) member states are represented by one delegation at the olive council, and a lack of consensus forces the delegation to abstain from voting.
In late October, PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah revealed plans to plant 750,000 olive trees in "Area A" as compensation for alleged "settler attacks."
Sagi Kaizler, Director of the grassroots Samaria Residents Council, last month said "a machine of false propaganda (has) developed around the olive harvest in Samaria. Radical leftist groups flooded the media with false reports that Jews were damaging olive trees and hurting Arabs."
Meanwhile PA Arabs were caught on film in October cutting down olive trees in Samaria to create a provocation.
Jews in Judea and Samaria have long argued that Arabs in the region use the olive harvest as a pretext to prepare attacks on the Jewish communities. Often PA Arabs insist on entering Jewish communities to pick olives under IDF protection.
PA residents often prey on the ignorance of Western journalists, who do not know that hacking off olive trees' branches is a token part of the harvesting process. As such, olive harvest season has become a breeding ground for false claims of vandalism.Video footage from October showed Arabs gathering near Itamar to ostensibly gather olives, but secretly filming Jewish homes, while one Arab man made a threatening throat-cutting gesture with his machete.
In March Itamar was the site of a massacre in which two Arabs snuck into a home and violently murdered 5 members of the Fogel family, including a 2 month old baby.israelnationalnews

The Dutch Railway Museum in Utrecht is seeking to block a plan for commemorating the city’s Holocaust victims.
Museum Director Paul Vlijmen last week said he opposes the erection of a statue near his museum in memory of 1,224 Jews who were deported to death camps from Utrecht during the Holocaust.
Vlijmen said he believed that his museum devoted enough attention to the subject with a plaque and an exhibition titled “Loaded Trains,” according to the local news site DeStadUtrecht.nl.
The museum is built on an old train station from which the Jews were deported.
Members of the Jewish community of Utrecht — which currently has no memorial monument for its Holocaust victims — want to place the statue near the museum.
Last week, the Foundation for the Jewish Monument Utrecht applied for a permit to build the monument, which will cost $237,000, according to the Dutch daily Telegraaf.
Maarten van Ditmarsch, a spokesperson for the Jewish foundation, said the Railway Museum has thwarted earlier attempts to honor the victims. “People said that the city already has a monument for those who fell during the war. I think, however, that this time we will succeed,” he was quoted as saying on DeStadUtrecht.nl.
The monument was designed by the artist Amiran Djanashvili and will consist of two parts: A steel memorial wall engraved with the victims’ names and a large shofar.jta

A city council member from Geneva has warned his municipality against allowing a public Hanukkah event, which he said would violate Swiss law.
“I’m not afraid of being called anti-Semitic, because my request is not directed at a religious community [but at] the authorities, which do not comply with the law by issuing an authorization for this event,” council member Pierre Gauthier is quoted as telling the Tribune de Geneve daily newspaper this week.
In a letter to the mayor, Gauthier, who is the secretary of a not-for-profit called “Geneva Secular Coordination,” cited Switzerland’s Law of Foreign Worship, which states that “no celebration of worship, procession or any religious ceremony is allowed on public roads.”
He urged the mayor’s office to cancel a public candle-lighting event on Mollard Square scheduled for Dec. 3. The organizer of the event, Rabbi Mendel Pevzner of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, told the Tribune, “This is not a religious event but a moment of sharing, open to all faiths. Since 1991, we have never encountered a problem.”
On Tuesday, another council member from Geneva, Denis Menoud, wrote on Facebook that he was pleased with the signing of a deal between world powers and Iran on its alleged nuclear weapons program because, “The bottom line is that Israel is on the path of carbonization.” The deal was reached last week after talks in Geneva.
MCG President Roger Golay condemned Menoud’s words and said the party expected him to resign.
Johanne Gurfinkel of CICAD, a Swiss group that monitors anti-Semitism, called on Menoud to “publicly apologize for his statement.” Gurfinkel also asked Menoud’s rightist MCG party to take a stand against “this type of hateful comments.”
Menoud told the Tribute de Genève that the “sentence was taken out of context,” and that he only meant to say that this situation in the Middle East will create a new paradigm. “The loser is Israel, strategically and politically.”

The families of the two Jewish women targeted in an acid attack in Zanzibar say the UK government must apply more pressure on the Tanzanian authorities to bring their attackers to justice.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Kirstie Trup and Katie Gee’s parents said there was no “sense of urgency” from the Foreign Office.
A suspect had been arrested by the local police but the families had not yet seen a photo of him, for the women to identify.
Miss Trup’s father Marc Trup said: "It just seems ridiculous that we haven't seen it and the girls haven't seen it and, as time goes on, their memory will fade."
The women, from north-west London, were volunteering as teachers in the African country when they had acid throw n on them as they walked through the Zanzibar capital, Stone Town in August. They were left with burns to their faces, chests and hands.
Mr Trup said the prosecution of those responsible for the attack was taking too long.
"I suspect the Tanzanian authorities don't take the Foreign Office remotely seriously ," he said.
He added :“I would like to see whoever threw acid brought to justice. I don’t blame the country, I don’t blame the religion, I blame the person."
The partner of Miss Gee’s mother, Doug Morris, said: "If the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are as committed to helping to bring these people to justice on behalf of two British citizens, then you would expect them to move hell and high water to do that.
"And there just doesn't seem to be any sense of urgency to conclude matters."
In a statement ,the Foreign Office said it had "provided every assistance" to the families, but "cannot interfere in another country's police investigation.
"However, the British Government has stressed the importance of a thorough police investigation to find the perpetrators of the attack and to ensure they are brought to justice."
The two women still have no idea why they were targeted; their families insisted they had been dressed appropriately for a Muslim area and respectful of local customs.
Mr Trup said his daughter was “progressing mentally and physically” but, she will have to wear a pressure garment on her burns 23 hours a day for a year and visit hospital once a week for physiotherapy.”
Miss Gee , who was more seriously injured in the attack, is doing remarkably well , said Mr Morris. “She is very strong mentally and just coping with the process of healing .”thejc

The stoning of Jewish children occurs in a vacuum. The sound doesn't travel.By Giulio Meotti

A two-year-old Jewish girl sustained severe injuries to her head. She was stoned by Arab Muslims in a car traveling in Jerusalem.
Another two-year-old Jewish girl, Adele Biton, who lives in the "settlement" of Ariel, fought for her life in a hospital for four months. Her family was stoned by Palestinian terrorists.
Last month another Jewish girl was wounded in Psagot.
Nazis and Palestinian Arabs share many pathological passions, but above all is the joy at killing and maiming Jewish children. And they do that with the complicity of Israeli bienpensants. "Throwing stones is the right and the duty of anyone living under foreign rule", wrote the official Haaretz correspondent for what the newspaper labels the "occupied territories". I will not mention her disgraceful name.
These Jewish children stoned and killed are invisible. They immediately disappear from Israel's public debate. They are not even mentioned in the Western journalistic coteries, parliaments and political offices.
It began with Maalot's schoolchildren. And the bus with the children of Avivim..
This silence can be easily understood through the corollary of the "occupation" mantra, according to which the Arabs are a priori exculpated from terrorism against civilians, including the use of suicide bombers and rockets.
Stoning a Jew is the minimum right granted by the international community. Arab and Muslim terrorism against Israel is a regrettable but understandable response to the Israeli “occupation” of the territories.
Who knows the name of Asher and Yonatan Palmer, the Israeli father and infant murdered near Kiryat Arba ?
Who knows the name of Shalhevet Pass? Her mother Oriya was pushing the stroller in Hevron, when a shot rang out and Oriya turned around. There was a hole in Shalhevet’s head.
Who knows the name of Hila, Hadar, Roni and Merav Hatuel? Four little Jewish children slaughtered with their pregnant mother, Tali, on the road to Gush Katif.
Yehuda Shoham was just five months old when he was struck in the head by a rock while his parents were driving home to Shiloh. He died a few days later.
My conscience will be forever hunted by the names of the Fogels.
In the insane world in which we live, a pogrom on Israeli children has become socially acceptable. It already happened. It is happening again.
Gas them or stone them, the harming of Jewish children has no echo in the world.
This is a world of fashionable cowardice.israelnationalnews

In his defense, Kanye West might be mentally ill. Also he’s probably angry that no major fashion designers seem interested in his leather jogging pants. Also the fact that he thinks leather jogging pants are a good idea just demonstrates once again that he isn’t on speaking terms with reality.
Speaking of not being on speaking terms with reality…

KANYE WEST: We don’t got it like that. When I tell you only seven black billionaires, look at marginalization, and we feel like we happy because me and Rick Ross got it made, or I got a spread outside, a couple of us, or they put a black president.

Man, let me tell you something about George Bush and oil money and Obama and no money. People want to say Obama can’t make these moves or he’s not executing. That’s because he ain’t got those connections. Black people don’t have the same level of connections as Jewish people. Black people don’t have the same connection as oil people.
You know we don’t know nobody that got a nice house. You know we don’t know nobody with paper like that we can go to when we down. You know they can just put us back or put us in a corporation. You know we ain’t in situation. Can you guarantee that your daughter can get a job at this radio station? But if you own this radio station, you could guarantee that. That’s what I’m talking about.

By the way, Kanye West, like most of the more obnoxious class warfare rappers, isn’t some ghetto kid. He’s the son of an Atlanta Journal-Constitution photojournalist and the Chair of the English Department at Chicago State University.
He’s as middle class as Obama or Jeremiah Wright. I won’t even get started on Al Shapton whose slumlord father drove a Cadillac. (At least until he got Sharpton’s half-sister pregnant.)
Maybe less so considering that Obama is the son of a diplomat and the grandson of a bank president.
The most obnoxious class warriors in the black community grew up well-off, but also obsessively jealous of prosperous white people whom they imagined had an even more inside track.
Kanye West has been set all his life. He was given a comfortable life. His mother paid to start up his career (just like M Night Shaymalan’s parents did) and he had a high end scholarship before that. And all that has done is made him angrier because he’s never had to work for anything in his life. And he imagines that Obama feels the same way.
Maybe he’s right. He’s certainly as egomaniacal and deluded as Obama.

In an interview with a New York radio station West asked listeners to not buy from Louis Vuitton until January,
“I was made for this moment. What happened was while I was out in Paris I wanted to meet with the head of Louis Vuitton, he said, ‘I don’t understand why we need to meet with you.’ I said, ‘Let me explain to you why you need to meet with me.’ Everybody in New York City right now don’t buy any Louis Vuitton until after January. Now do you want to meet with me? Now do you want to meet with me? Influence. They think that I don’t realize my power.”
This comes after West slammed Fendi for rejecting his leather jogging pants designs. In his now infamous interview for the BBC West said of the leather joggers fiasco,

A free press is messy — and when wrong, culpable — but it is also our best protection against despotism and one of the only tools we have in the West to root out corruption. Every other arm of state or civil society had failed to expose the problem, and it was down to the press to do so on behalf of everyone else.

Events continue to demonstrate the reason why a free press matters so much. Without it, plenty of people, often in positions of considerable power, can get away with absolutely anything. A free press is messy -- and when wrong, culpable -- but it is also one of the only tools we have in the West to stop our decline into a form of permanent, systemic corruption. Two very different recent cases should remind us of this fact.
This month's example comes in the guise of that most essential staple of British tabloid life: the naughty vicar. Or in this case, the extremely naughty Methodist Minister. The Reverend Paul Flowers has just been revealed, thanks to a disgruntled friend and the Mail on Sunday newspaper, to be a buyer and user of a variety of Class A drugs. Since that first revelation, he has also been exposed as having indulged in plenty of other distinctly non-Methodist activities. Needless to say, the British press -- which bows to no one in its ability to turn a pun -- has dubbed him 'The Crystal Methodist.'
All of which might be deemed to just be so much fun or personal tragedy. Except that there is a serious dimension to this revelation. Which is that the Revd Flowers was also the chairman of the Co-operative Bank, a bank with 4.7 million customers in Britain, which has gone through an appallingly turbulent and mismanaged period in recent years, during which savers have suffered and the government has been forced to step in. Suffice it to say, without going into the scale of the mismanagement, that the Revd Flowers had absolutely no qualifications for running a bank. Yet, unfathomably, this was the important and personally lucrative position that this man ended up in. Why does the role of the press matter in all this? Because every other arm of state or civil society had failed to expose the problem, and it was down to the press to do so on behalf of everyone else.
Earlier this month, for instance, the Revd Flowers appeared before a Parliamentary Committee and was asked various pertinent questions about the bank which he ran until June of this year. Much of it was pretty basic stuff. He was asked what the size of the Co-operative Bank's total assets. He said he thought the bank had about £3 billion of assets. There was some incredulity from the MPs, and it took the chairman of the committee to inform Flowers that the actual figure of his bank's asset was closer to £47 billion. On other questions, the Revd. did not perform even as well as that, barely making a stab at some answers, and repeatedly having to inform the committee that he would have to get back to them on that one.
Although Parliament did not have time to do much about this, it did not actually expose him. This was just another unsatisfactory and ignored grilling in a committee room. During an earlier period, when it might have done something, the now broken-up Financial Service Authority (FSA) had absolutely nothing to say about Flowers's unique lack of qualification for his role. It did nothing significant -- so far as anyone can see -- to prevent or curtail a major British bank being run by somebody utterly unqualified for the task.
The point is that it took an undercover journalistic investigation and a tabloid splash to expose Revd Flowers and cause all the long-overdue repercussions of resignations at the top, and so on. Many investors and taxpayers may have wondered in recent years, "What are the people at the head of the co-op smoking?" It took the press to tell them.
On a completely different note, take another case of media correction. Last year the Al-Madinah school opened in Derby, and took advantage of the current government's "free-schools" initiative. The policy allows parents to set up their own schools with taxpayer support. Generally a highly successful policy, it has nevertheless always been open to abuse, and the Al-Madinah school was a specialist in this regard.
In the summer, the Sunday Times revealed what actually went on at the school. It was reported that, among other things, everybody -- pupils and teachers alike -- whether Muslim (a majority) or not, were forced by the school to wear ultra-conservative Islamic dress. Other rules also enforced the most hardline Islamic rules, including a ban on bringing any products that were not halal [permitted by Islamic Sharia law] onto the premises, in what was, after all, a state-funded school. These revelations, and more, were immediately picked up by other media outlets, created a national outrage and caused government inspectors to be sent in early. After several rounds of inspections, temporary closures and more, the news emerged that the school's leadership has been forced out and the institution has now been taken over.
Both of these cases -- the "Crystal Methodist" and the Al-Madinah school -- obviously relate to very different places. But most other parts of the state, and indeed civil society, had failed to root out two very different, but scandalous, problems that directly affected taxpayers and citizens. It took the free press in all its mucky glory to expose these problems and for something to be done about them.
Will a free press go wrong on occasions? Certainly -- and where it breaks the law it must be punished. But in the eagerness to punish an entire profession, Britain's lawmakers and others have forgotten one of the most important lessons of all: that a genuinely free press is not just one of our best protections against despotism, it is one of the only tools we have to root out corruption. One can understand why some people may be opposed to it. But long may it remain free.gatestoneinstitute